Inside Higher Ed | Newshttps://www.insidehighered.com/feed/atom/iphone_today
enPh.D. recipients increase in number, job prospects vary, new U.S. data showhttps://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/12/09/phd-recipients-increase-number-job-prospects-vary-new-us-data-show
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>American universities awarded a record number of doctorates in 2015 -- although the rate of growth in the number of Ph.D. recipients continued a several-year decline. And the 55,006 recipients were more likely to be men and to be American citizens or permanent residents than they were the year before.</p>
<p>Those are among the findings of the newest version of the federally supported Survey of Earned Doctorates, covering the year 2015. The survey, the best available data on Ph.D. graduates, is conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago on behalf of six federal agencies: the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Endowment for the Humanities and&nbsp;the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.</p>
<p>The survey provides a slew of demographic and other data about who received Ph.D.s from American universities, which institutions awarded those degrees, how graduates paid for their educations and how they fared in the job market upon finishing.</p>
<p>The number of Ph.D. recipients rose by 1.9&nbsp;percent in 2015, to 55,006 from 54,003 in 2014 -- the smallest increase since 2011. Nearly 64&nbsp;percent of them were U.S. citizens or permanent residents, up by about one percentage point from 2014. But the proportion of doctorate recipients who are American remains well below the level it was 15 or more years ago, when the foreign born were a quarter or less of Ph.D. recipients.</p>
<p>The percentage of doctorate recipients who are Hispanic increased by 8.67&nbsp;percent in 2015, larger than the increase for Asian (6.6&nbsp;percent), black (4.8&nbsp;percent) or white Americans (2.5&nbsp;percent). The proportion of new Ph.D. holders who are men continued to edge up slightly, as it has for much of this decade, to 53.8&nbsp;percent.</p>
<p>Sixty-two&nbsp;percent of the roughly 49,000 Ph.D. recipients who responded to a question about their post-Ph.D. plans said they had a definitive commitment for employment or postdoctoral study upon earning their degree, slightly up from 2014 but down sharply from 2010, when the figure was 68.1&nbsp;percent.</p>
<p>There was significant variation by field in those postdegree outcomes. Nearly 70&nbsp;percent of recipients of math and computer science doctorates and 68.5&nbsp;percent of psychology and social science Ph.D.s said they had definitive jobs or postdoctoral study positions, compared to 58.6&nbsp;percent in the life sciences and 54.8&nbsp;percent in the humanities and arts. The figure was 64.4&nbsp;percent for education doctorate recipients and 58.2&nbsp;percent for engineers.</p>
<p>The increase of roughly 1,000 more doctorates granted in 2015 than 2014 can be attributed largely to a handful of fields -- engineering, education and some social sciences, as seen in the table below.</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="592">
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;"><strong>Subfield of study</strong></td>
<td class="rtecenter" style="width: 48px;"><strong>2005</strong></td>
<td class="rtecenter" style="width: 48px;"><strong>2010</strong></td>
<td class="rtecenter" style="width: 48px;"><strong>2014</strong></td>
<td class="rtecenter" style="width: 48px;"><strong>2015</strong></td>
<td class="rtecenter" style="width: 64px;"><strong>% Change, 2014-15</strong></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">All fields</td>
<td class="rtecenter">43,385</td>
<td class="rtecenter">48,031</td>
<td class="rtecenter">54,003</td>
<td class="rtecenter">55,006</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1.86%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Life sciences</td>
<td class="rtecenter">9,310</td>
<td class="rtecenter">11,319</td>
<td class="rtecenter">12,484</td>
<td class="rtecenter">12,520</td>
<td class="rtecenter">0.29%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Agricultural sciences and natural resources</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,160</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,100</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,338</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,439</td>
<td class="rtecenter">7.55%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Biological and biomedical sciences</td>
<td class="rtecenter">6,367</td>
<td class="rtecenter">8,046</td>
<td class="rtecenter">8,867</td>
<td class="rtecenter">8,801</td>
<td class="rtecenter">-0.74%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Health sciences</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,783</td>
<td class="rtecenter">2,173</td>
<td class="rtecenter">2,279</td>
<td class="rtecenter">2,280</td>
<td class="rtecenter">0.04%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Physical sciences and earth sciences</td>
<td class="rtecenter">4,359</td>
<td class="rtecenter">4,995</td>
<td class="rtecenter">5,912</td>
<td class="rtecenter">5,924</td>
<td class="rtecenter">0.20%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Chemistry</td>
<td class="rtecenter">2,126</td>
<td class="rtecenter">2,304</td>
<td class="rtecenter">2,673</td>
<td class="rtecenter">2,675</td>
<td class="rtecenter">0.07%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Geosciences, atmospheric and ocean sciences</td>
<td class="rtecenter">714</td>
<td class="rtecenter">862</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,099</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,057</td>
<td class="rtecenter">-3.82%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Physics and astronomy</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,519</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,829</td>
<td class="rtecenter">2,140</td>
<td class="rtecenter">2,192</td>
<td class="rtecenter">2.43%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Mathematics and computer sciences</td>
<td class="rtecenter">2,334</td>
<td class="rtecenter">3,223</td>
<td class="rtecenter">3,863</td>
<td class="rtecenter">3,825</td>
<td class="rtecenter">-0.98%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Computer and information sciences</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,129</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,633</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,989</td>
<td class="rtecenter">2,005</td>
<td class="rtecenter">0.80%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Mathematics and statistics</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,205</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,590</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,874</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,820</td>
<td class="rtecenter">-2.88%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Psychology and social sciences</td>
<td class="rtecenter">7,149</td>
<td class="rtecenter">7,883</td>
<td class="rtecenter">8,752</td>
<td class="rtecenter">9,095</td>
<td class="rtecenter">3.92%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Psychology</td>
<td class="rtecenter">3,322</td>
<td class="rtecenter">3,421</td>
<td class="rtecenter">3,724</td>
<td class="rtecenter">3,782</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1.56%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Social sciences</td>
<td class="rtecenter">3,827</td>
<td class="rtecenter">4,462</td>
<td class="rtecenter">5,028</td>
<td class="rtecenter">5,313</td>
<td class="rtecenter">5.67%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">-- Anthropology</td>
<td class="rtecenter">456</td>
<td class="rtecenter">507</td>
<td class="rtecenter">524</td>
<td class="rtecenter">493</td>
<td class="rtecenter">-5.92%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">-- Economics</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,061</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,073</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,196</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,256</td>
<td class="rtecenter">5.02%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">-- Political science and government</td>
<td class="rtecenter">618</td>
<td class="rtecenter">728</td>
<td class="rtecenter">777</td>
<td class="rtecenter">859</td>
<td class="rtecenter">10.55%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">-- Sociology</td>
<td class="rtecenter">536</td>
<td class="rtecenter">639</td>
<td class="rtecenter">679</td>
<td class="rtecenter">745</td>
<td class="rtecenter">9.72%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">-- Other social sciences</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,156</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,515</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,852</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,960</td>
<td class="rtecenter">5.83%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Engineering</td>
<td class="rtecenter">6,426</td>
<td class="rtecenter">7,578</td>
<td class="rtecenter">9,633</td>
<td class="rtecenter">9,897</td>
<td class="rtecenter">2.74%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Education</td>
<td class="rtecenter">6,227</td>
<td class="rtecenter">5,288</td>
<td class="rtecenter">4,791</td>
<td class="rtecenter">5,117</td>
<td class="rtecenter">6.80%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Humanities and arts</td>
<td class="rtecenter">5,187</td>
<td class="rtecenter">5,016</td>
<td class="rtecenter">5,526</td>
<td class="rtecenter">5,600</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1.34%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">-- Foreign languages and literature</td>
<td class="rtecenter">607</td>
<td class="rtecenter">601</td>
<td class="rtecenter">674</td>
<td class="rtecenter">656</td>
<td class="rtecenter">-2.67%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">-- History</td>
<td class="rtecenter">924</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,005</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,186</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,145</td>
<td class="rtecenter">-3.46%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">-- Letters (English, classics, etc.)</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,389</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,516</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,552</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,590</td>
<td class="rtecenter">2.45%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">-- Other humanities and arts</td>
<td class="rtecenter">2,267</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,894</td>
<td class="rtecenter">2,114</td>
<td class="rtecenter">2,209</td>
<td class="rtecenter">4.49%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Business management and administration</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,171</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,366</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,583</td>
<td class="rtecenter">1,588</td>
<td class="rtecenter">0.32%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Communication</td>
<td class="rtecenter">488</td>
<td class="rtecenter">638</td>
<td class="rtecenter">663</td>
<td class="rtecenter">668</td>
<td class="rtecenter">0.75%</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:336px;">Non-S&amp;E fields not elsewhere classified</td>
<td class="rtecenter">733</td>
<td class="rtecenter">725</td>
<td class="rtecenter">796</td>
<td class="rtecenter">772</td>
<td class="rtecenter">-3.02%</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>As has long been the case, a small set of American universities produces a disproportionate share of Ph.D. recipients. Below are the 25 institutions that awarded the most doctorates in 2015.</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="464">
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of Michigan at Ann Arbor</td>
<td class="rtecenter" style="width: 96px;">852</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of Texas at Austin</td>
<td class="rtecenter">841</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U at Wisconsin at Madison</td>
<td class="rtecenter">836</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U at California, Berkeley</td>
<td class="rtecenter">811</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign</td>
<td class="rtecenter">781</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of Florida</td>
<td class="rtecenter">747</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of California, Los Angeles</td>
<td class="rtecenter">744</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">Texas A&amp;M U</td>
<td class="rtecenter">732</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">Ohio State U</td>
<td class="rtecenter">726</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">Harvard U</td>
<td class="rtecenter">715</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">Purdue U</td>
<td class="rtecenter">714</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of Minnesota-Twin Cities</td>
<td class="rtecenter">711</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">Pennsylvania State U</td>
<td class="rtecenter">694</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">Stanford U</td>
<td class="rtecenter">689</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of Washington</td>
<td class="rtecenter">666</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of Maryland at College Park</td>
<td class="rtecenter">619</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">Massachusetts Institute of Technology</td>
<td class="rtecenter">606</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">Michigan State U</td>
<td class="rtecenter">597</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">Walden U</td>
<td class="rtecenter">562</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of California, Davis</td>
<td class="rtecenter">539</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">Georgia Institute of Technology</td>
<td class="rtecenter">526</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of California, San Diego</td>
<td class="rtecenter">501</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">Johns Hopkins U</td>
<td class="rtecenter">492</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill</td>
<td class="rtecenter">492</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of Arizona</td>
<td class="rtecenter">485</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>Some universities have strong track records of awarding doctorates to members of underrepresented minority groups. Twenty institutions are responsible for nearly a third of the roughly 11,000 Hispanic and Latino Ph.D. holders produced by American universities from 2011 to 2015, for instance; six of the top 13 were campuses of the University of California, and the top 10 are below.</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="464">
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of California, Berkeley</td>
<td class="rtecenter" style="width: 96px;">293</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of California, Los Angeles</td>
<td class="rtecenter">246</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras</td>
<td class="rtecenter">240</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of Texas at Austin</td>
<td class="rtecenter">228</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of Florida</td>
<td class="rtecenter">192</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">Texas A&amp;M U, College Station and Health Science Center</td>
<td class="rtecenter">187</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of Arizona</td>
<td class="rtecenter">177</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">CUNY, Graduate Center</td>
<td class="rtecenter">175</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of Michigan at Ann Arbor</td>
<td class="rtecenter">174</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of California, San Diego</td>
<td class="rtecenter">172</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>The same is true for African-American Ph.D.s, and below are the 10 institutions that have produced the most doctorate holders in that group over the last five years.</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="464">
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">Walden U</td>
<td class="rtecenter" style="width: 96px;">682</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">Howard U</td>
<td class="rtecenter">354</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of Michigan at Ann Arbor</td>
<td class="rtecenter">149</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">Jackson State U</td>
<td class="rtecenter">135</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">Texas A&amp;M U, College Station and Health Science Center</td>
<td class="rtecenter">133</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of Georgia</td>
<td class="rtecenter">130</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of South Carolina at Columbia</td>
<td class="rtecenter">124</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">Auburn U, Auburn</td>
<td class="rtecenter">120</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">Georgia State U</td>
<td class="rtecenter">120</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20">
<td height="20" style="height:20px;width:368px;">U of Maryland, College Park</td>
<td class="rtecenter">119</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>Other highlights of the survey:</p>
<ul>
<li>The proportion of all Ph.D. recipients who graduated with no debt increased by 5&nbsp;percent, while the share who completed their degrees with $10,000 or less in debt grew by 8.2&nbsp;percent and the proportion who finished with at least $30,000 in debt rose by 0.26&nbsp;percent.</li>
<li>About a third of all doctorate recipients in 2015 listed their primary source of financial assistance as being a research assistantship or traineeship, followed by 27.3&nbsp;percent who said fellowships or grants, 20.7&nbsp;percent teaching assistantships, and 15.3&nbsp;percent their own resources. Men were significantly likelier than women (37 to 26&nbsp;percent) to identify research positions as their primary financial resource, while women were nearly twice as likely as men (20.2&nbsp;percent to 11.1&nbsp;percent) to say they supported themselves.</li>
<li>About 12.5&nbsp;percent of all doctorate recipients in 2015 had attended a community college.</li>
</ul>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Editorial Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/287" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Graduate education</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/288" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Graduate students</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-is-this-breaking-news- field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this breaking news?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-diversity-newsletter field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this diversity newsletter?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div>Fri, 09 Dec 2016 08:00:00 +0000Doug Lederman179881 at https://www.insidehighered.comOhio is site of next showdown over campus carryhttps://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/12/09/ohio-site-next-showdown-over-campus-carry
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>As campus carry legislation continues to spread, Ohio has emerged as the next battle site. It is one of the larger of the 18 states that do not permit guns on campus.</p>
<p>The Ohio Senate and House of Representatives have both now approved legislation that critics deride as the &ldquo;guns everywhere&rdquo; bill. Governor John Kasich, a Republican, has not indicated whether he will sign the bill, which has strong support from his party.</p>
<p>The legislation removes blanket bans on bringing guns to certain places, such as college campuses and day care centers. Individual colleges, day care centers and other organizations could still regulate guns in their facilities.</p>
<p>But even if colleges&rsquo; boards don&rsquo;t rush to welcome guns on campus (and they aren&rsquo;t currently expected to do so), critics say the legislation would effectively make it too easy to bring guns on campus. Currently, bringing a gun to a &ldquo;gun-free zone&rdquo; such as a campus is a low-level felony. Under the legislation, doing so would no longer be a felony and would be equivalent to a parking ticket -- so many professors fear that people wouldn&rsquo;t think twice about bringing a gun to campus.</p>
<p>Notably, the law does not affect the Ohio Statehouse, where lawmakers work, and guns would continue to be banned there.</p>
<p>Many faculty members have noted the incongruity. As <em><a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/12/06/Expanded_gun_bill_inches_closer_to_passage.html" target="_blank">The Columbus Dispatch</a></em> noted, loud applause interrupted a legislative hearing on the issue when Molly Farrell, an assistant professor of English literature at Ohio State University, asked, &quot;If guns are not allowed in your workplace here, Senator, why should they be allowed in mine?&quot;</p>
<p>But the Buckeye Firearms Association is also using turns of phrase to advance its cause. In all of its statements in support of the legislation, the group refers to &ldquo;gun-free zones&rdquo; on campuses as &ldquo;victim zones.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Faculty groups are pushing hard against the bill and hoping Kasich will veto it.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.ohiohighered.org/sites/ohiohighered.org/files/uploads/ofc/docs/OFC-HB48-Resolution_Dec2015.pdf" target="_blank">resolution</a> sent to the governor by the Ohio Faculty Council says that &ldquo;the free and open exchange of ideas&rdquo; is fundamental to higher education and such &ldquo;exchanges are facilitated by environments that are violence‐free/safe spaces.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Added the resolution: &ldquo;An understanding that individuals engaged in these exchanges could legally possess handguns would significantly and negatively impact the dynamic of those discussions and the value of higher education in Ohio.&rdquo;</p>
<p>While the governor&rsquo;s views are unknown, pro-gun groups have seized on <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/11/29/student-injures-11-people-knife-car-attack-ohio-state" target="_blank">the recent stabbing attack</a> by one Ohio State student on others to say that students on campus should have the option of arming themselves.</p>
<p>An <a href="http://bearingarms.com/bob-o/2016/11/28/ohio-state-terrorist-attack-why-we-need-campus-carry/" target="_blank">essay</a> on the website Bearing Arms says, &ldquo;Islamic terrorist groups, most notably ISIS, have called upon Muslims in the West to carry out terrorist attacks against soft targets using knives and vehicles. School and college campuses are among the easiest targets available, as they contain high concentrations of people made unarmed and defenseless because of shortsighted state laws that have made most campuses &lsquo;gun-free zones.&rsquo;&rdquo; (While the incident is being investigated as possibly motivated by terrorist groups, officials have not stated definitively that this was the case.)</p>
<p>Also this week, some Ohio residents marched at Ohio State with guns, proclaiming <a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/12/05/armed-walkers-warn-that-students-are-sitting-ducks.html">&quot;No More Sitting Ducks&quot;</a> as the slogan to end gun limits on campus.</p>
<p>Critics of campus carry have responded that the Ohio State police officer who shot the student who was attacking others actually was able to more quickly assess the situation and take action because there were not multiple people trying to use guns at the time.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-art-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Students and Violence</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Editorial Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/224" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Crime</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-is-this-breaking-news- field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this breaking news?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-diversity-newsletter field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this diversity newsletter?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div>Fri, 09 Dec 2016 08:00:00 +0000Scott Jaschik179906 at https://www.insidehighered.comPrivate universities branch into associate degreeshttps://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/12/09/private-universities-branch-associate-degrees
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>There aren&rsquo;t many private two-year colleges in the country.</p>
<p>Just about 200 offer associate degree programs despite the overwhelming prevalence of public community colleges, but at least two private universities are expanding into that arena.</p>
<p>The University of St. Thomas in Minnesota is <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/11/18/u-st-thomas-will-start-associate-degree-program" target="_blank">launching</a> a two-year college for low-income students, while Yeshiva University in New York City is offering an associate program for students who couldn&#39;t meet the admissions requirements for its bachelor&#39;s programs but are still interested in attending the institution.</p>
<p>&ldquo;In the Twin Cities there is a large and persistent education achievement gap,&rdquo; said Julie Sullivan, president of St. Thomas. &ldquo;Not every segment is completing education and having access to job opportunities that might lift them out of poverty, so we have an issue in our community and it&rsquo;s talked about around the country.&nbsp;&hellip; Zip code is the bigger predictor of college achievement.&rdquo;</p>
<p>So the Roman Catholic university is creating the Dougherty Family College, which will open next fall and offer an associate degree in liberal arts. The new college is being created with the help of more than $18&nbsp;million that was raised in private donations. The university is awaiting approval from its accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, before it starts accepting applications.</p>
<p>But the new college is specifically for students who display a high level of financial need and have at least a 2.5&nbsp;grade point average in high school.</p>
<p>Having a high level of financial need is a big sticking point for the new college, since students will only be expected to pay about $1,000 in tuition. That&rsquo;s based on a $15,000 tuition price tag to attend the college and a fully qualified Pell Grant student receiving about $8,000 in financial aid and about $6,000 in scholarship, Sullivan said, adding that it&rsquo;s designed so that students have &ldquo;some skin in the game.&rdquo; Undergraduate tuition at the university is about $38,000 a year for eight courses.</p>
<p>&ldquo;This is best suited for students right out of high school who have shown some academic progress but haven&rsquo;t demonstrated their full academic potential,&rdquo; Sullivan said. &ldquo;This is a program that is going to be very structured and holistic. There won&rsquo;t be a lot of choices. They&rsquo;ll be in classes and stay in the cohort model of learning. Our faculty and full-time mentors and coaches are only there for these students.&rdquo;</p>
<p>By &ldquo;structured&rdquo; Sullivan means that students will attend the college full time, four days a week and take additional first-year college experience courses that focus on study skills, time management, financial literacy, professional development and etiquette.</p>
<p>They&rsquo;re also developing a once-a-week work program so students can experience working in businesses in the Twin Cities.</p>
<p>The new associate degree will also meet Minnesota&rsquo;s statewide transfer requirements, so students can either continue at St. Thomas or enter the state&rsquo;s public university system as juniors.</p>
<p>&ldquo;There are people who really want that four-year degree and [are] just not ready to be successful in some of these gateways we currently have into that degree,&rdquo; Sullivan said. &ldquo;This won&rsquo;t be right for everybody, but closing the educational attainment gap and closing the prosperity gap isn&#39;t a competitive sport. Everyone needs to step up and put an oar in the water.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Meanwhile, on the East Coast, another private university is establishing a two-year program to help students reach their completion goals faster.</p>
<p>Yeshiva University, a Jewish institution located in Manhattan, is also launching a two-year program in business that would award an associate of science degree in management next fall.</p>
<p>&ldquo;This is for students who are really not yet ready for a baccalaureate program,&rdquo; said Selma Botman, the university&rsquo;s provost. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not [an] open-admissions program and not special needs, but it&rsquo;s a program for students who may want to complete higher education after two years or who may want to matriculate into an undergraduate business school and complete a bachelor&rsquo;s degree.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Yeshiva is modeling its new two-year program on the City University of New York&rsquo;s <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/02/26/accelerated-associate-degree-track-cuny-pays-and-earns-fans" target="_blank">Accelerated Study in Associate Programs</a> initiative. That widely heralded program encourages students to attend full time, promotes classes that focus on goal setting and study skills, and uses intrusive advising. Botman previously served as provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs in the CUNY system.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re looking at solid [C-graded] students who haven&rsquo;t hit their stride yet, so by adapting what we see in research and [what] other schools do for this particular group, we want to focus on them and see that they thrive,&rdquo; said Paul Russo, dean of Yeshiva&rsquo;s Katz School of Graduate and Professional Studies.</p>
<p>Part of the program will also include getting students a chance to experience the New York City business world by visiting start-ups and integrating courses focused on incubation and global commerce.</p>
<p>Tuition, however, will remain the same for the associate degree course as it is to attend the university, Botman said, citing the expense to run the program and provide support, as well as the requirement that students live in the dorms and participate in campus activities.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We struggled for a long time in higher education with community colleges getting students through,&rdquo; Russo said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s been enough success out there that we now feel the time is right for us to pursue this option -- it&rsquo;s not simply another program. We&rsquo;re building in intrusive advising, a data collection structure so we can monitor what&rsquo;s going on.&quot;&nbsp;</p>
<p>For this group of students, the university wants to pay more attention to them, he said.&nbsp;</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-art-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Community Colleges</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Editorial Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/206" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Curriculum</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-is-this-breaking-news- field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this breaking news?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-diversity-newsletter field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this diversity newsletter?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div>Fri, 09 Dec 2016 08:00:00 +0000Ashley A. Smith179886 at https://www.insidehighered.comMasterCard Foundation's scholarship program funds thousands of students from Africahttps://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/12/09/mastercard-foundations-scholarship-program-funds-thousands-students-africa
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>Irene Kinyanguli, a senior at Arizona State University, comes from Tanzania, where her father works in a gas station and her mother is a teacher. &ldquo;We did have the basics -- food, shelter, clothing -- we got what we needed,&rdquo; Kinyanguli says. But an international higher education would have been out of reach without a scholarship.</p>
<p>Kinyanguli is one of more than 100 students at Arizona State on full scholarships funded by the MasterCard Foundation, which to date reports having made pledges of about $828&nbsp;million for its four-year-old flagship scholarship program. The program, officially launched in 2012, is focused on developing young leaders from disadvantaged backgrounds who come primarily from the African continent.</p>
<p>&ldquo;If I wake up tomorrow the president of Tanzania,&rdquo; says Kinyanguli, a public policy major who spent the summer as an intern to Tanzania&rsquo;s permanent mission to the United Nations, &ldquo;MasterCard would have played a very big role.&rdquo;</p>
<p>As of August of this year, the Toronto-based MasterCard Foundation -- an independent, private foundation founded with a gift of shares when the credit card company of the same name went public in 2006 -- had awarded scholarships to a total of 19,338 students. The vast majority of scholarship recipients so far -- 16,677, or about 86&nbsp;percent -- study at the high school level through one of the foundation&rsquo;s nongovernmental organization partners in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. Another 2,661 students have earned scholarships for university-level education -- 2,274 for undergraduate study and 387 for graduate programs. About two-thirds of the scholars across all educational levels are women, though the proportion of women is slightly lower at the undergraduate (62&nbsp;percent) and graduate (57&nbsp;percent) levels.</p>
<p>At the university level, the foundation has entered into partnerships with universities that handle the recruitment and admission of scholars. The foundation has agreements with 10 well-known colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada, as well as one institution in the Middle East, one in Latin America and one in Europe (see box for a full list of universities). However, the majority of university-level scholars-- 64&nbsp;percent at the undergraduate level and 70&nbsp;percent at the graduate level -- study at partner universities in Africa.</p>
<div class="factbox">
<p><strong>Partnering Universities and NGOs</strong></p>
<p><strong>Africa</strong></p>
<p>African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (multicountry)<br />
African Leadership Academy (multicountry)<br />
Ashesi University (Ghana)<br />
Campaign for Female Education (Ghana)<br />
Carnegie Mellon University in Rwanda<br />
Forum for African Women Educationalists (Rwanda)<br />
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana)<br />
Makerere University (Uganda)<br />
University of Cape Town (South Africa)<br />
University of Pretoria (South Africa)</p>
<p><strong>U.S. and Canada</strong></p>
<p>Arizona State University<br />
Duke University<br />
McGill University<br />
Michigan State University<br />
Stanford University<br />
University of British Columbia<br />
University of California, Berkeley<br />
University of Toronto<br />
Wellesley College</p>
<p><strong>Other</strong></p>
<p>American University of Beirut (Lebanon)<br />
EARTH University (Costa Rica)<br />
University of Edinburgh (Scotland)</p>
</div>
<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s one of the largest private scholarship programs that have ever been implemented for African youth,&rdquo; says Kim Kerr, the MasterCard Foundation&rsquo;s deputy director for education and learning. &ldquo;The purpose of the scholars program is to support both education but also leadership development of bright young people that have a personal commitment to change the world around them and want to improve the lives of others.&rdquo;</p>
<p>At a time when many Western universities are focused on international strategies that involve recruiting students who can afford to pay for their educations, MasterCard&rsquo;s initiative stands out as a major funding source for students from a less wealthy part of the world. Students from sub-Saharan Africa make up just 3.4&nbsp;percent of international students at U.S. institutions, according to the <a href="http://www.iie.org/Research-and-Publications/Open-Doors/Data/International-Students/All-Places-of-Origin/2014-16" target="_blank">latest Open Doors report</a> from the Institute of International Education.</p>
<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a big bet for sure and a very high-profile one at that,&rdquo; says Joan Dassin, a professor of international education and development at Brandeis University and formerly the director of the <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/23/look-back-ford-foundation-international-fellowships-program" target="_blank">Ford Foundation&rsquo;s International Fellowships Program</a>, which supported graduate-level education for about 4,300 people from developing countries from 2001 through 2013. Dassin is co-editing a forthcoming book on international scholarships in higher education that will include a chapter on the MasterCard Foundation Scholars program.</p>
<p>&ldquo;One of the very commendable aspects of the program is they invested quite early in an evaluation framework, so they have been collecting data and information and are now even envisioning a longer-term tracking study that would look at the outcomes over the decades,&rdquo; Dassin said. That&rsquo;s very important because of the high investment in students at early stages of their schooling. The Ford Foundation took a different bet. We focused on graduate-level education because we felt that was the quickest route to providing people with the education and skills they need to make an impact on their home countries.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;Both approaches are valid,&rdquo; Dassin said. &ldquo;But what I think is interesting is MasterCard has really thought long and hard about what is the appropriate evaluation framework for this kind of program that puts such high stakes on an early level of schooling when in fact the results of that in terms of formation of professionals or capacity-building of governments or social entrepreneurship -- the kind of social change outcomes that funders like to see -- are way off in the future.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;Tracking our scholars will be a decades-long project,&rdquo; Barry Burciul, the senior manager for learning and strategy at the MasterCard Foundation, said via email. &ldquo;In the short term, we&rsquo;re focusing on understanding scholars&rsquo; pathways in terms of educational attainment, postgraduation transitions to further education or work, and their attitudes and intentions with respect to leadership and their place as agents of social change. In the longer term, we&rsquo;re keen to understand the ways in which scholars are creating growth and change in their communities and broader societies. What is their impact, what factors help or hinder them along the way, and through what mechanisms are they able to succeed?&rdquo;</p>
<p>There are relatively few alumni of the program at this point -- 3,450 total, and just 262 at the higher education level (136 at the undergraduate level and 126 at the graduate level). A small-scale survey of 36 of the university-level alumni -- 17 women and 19 men from Africa and the Middle East, all but four of whom studied outside their home country -- found that six to 18 months after graduation, 14 of the scholars were working, 14 were pursuing further education, six were doing both and two were neither working nor in school. About half of the alumni (47&nbsp;percent) were living in their home countries. Another 33&nbsp;percent indicated they planned to return home within the next five years, while 8&nbsp;percent said they did not know when but planned on returning. Eleven&nbsp;percent said they did not know whether they would return.</p>
<p>There is no contractual requirement that those who study abroad on the MasterCard Foundation&rsquo;s scholarships return to their home countries. &ldquo;The vision for the program was to do as much as we could to encourage return, without enforcing it contractually in one way or another,&rdquo; says the foundation&rsquo;s Kerr. &ldquo;We tried to create as much a pull factor as we can back to Africa for the students who are studying outside of the continent. In part that&rsquo;s been just by the identification of the young people that we support in the program. We look for people who have a strong interest in doing something to support their communities and their countries.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The scholarship program provides funding for its university-level scholars to complete internships in Africa, which Kerr described as another &ldquo;powerful pull factor.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;And more and more we also recognize the importance of a network for young people, so we&rsquo;ve done a lot of work in the program in terms of building connections among scholars, having a strong, vibrant network that you tap into and [that] lets you know about opportunities and makes you feel part of something when you&rsquo;re returning to Ghana or Kenya or Uganda, wherever it may be,&rdquo; Kerr said.</p>
<p>The scholarships are comprehensive, covering not just tuition and fees, but also room and board, books and supplies, and transportation-related costs. Scholars also receive a living stipend, the amount of which varies by institution, and there is additional funding for participation in internships and leadership development programs. The foundation also provides funds to institutions to underwrite salaries of staff associated with the program.</p>
<p>A report on the program published by the foundation in September found that three-quarters of the university-level scholars enrolled in the 2014-15 academic year earned grade point averages of 3.0 or above --- though it notes the data are preliminary, &ldquo;and based on the first two, relatively small cohorts of tertiary scholars.&rdquo; The scholarship has three core selection criteria: academic talent, leadership potential and economic disadvantage.</p>
<p>Chinwe A. Effiong, the assistant dean for the MasterCard Foundation Scholars and youth empowerment programs at Michigan State University, said she&rsquo;s been impressed by the quality of students being recruited through the program. Effiong said Michigan State received 1,200 applications for MasterCard Foundation scholarships last year, short-listed 60 students and selected 20. Just over half of the scholars -- 53&nbsp;percent -- are in the university&rsquo;s Honors College.</p>
<p>&ldquo;These are really the best students,&rdquo; Effiong said. &ldquo;Then when you sit with them and start listening to their stories, it just blows you away. Some are coming from very underprivileged homes, and you see that the objective of the foundation to find those diamonds in the rough is being met. They&rsquo;re going out of their way to look for young people who would never have had the opportunity of this kind of education but have so much to offer, just given the right opportunity and exposure.&rdquo;</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-art-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Global</div><div class="field-item odd">Foreign Students</div><div class="field-item even">International Higher Education</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Editorial Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/editorial-tags/foundations" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Foundations</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/177" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">International higher education</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/262" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Foreign Students in U.S.</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-source field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Image Source:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Jake Naughton for the MasterCard Foundation</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-caption field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Image Caption:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">MasterCard Foundation scholars from various North American universities at a leadership seminar.</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-is-this-breaking-news- field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this breaking news?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-diversity-newsletter field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this diversity newsletter?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div>Fri, 09 Dec 2016 08:00:00 +0000Elizabeth Redden178551 at https://www.insidehighered.comColleges start new academic programshttps://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/12/09/colleges-start-new-academic-programs
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><ul>
<li>Anna Maria College is starting a master&rsquo;s program in social work.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.gardner-webb.edu/newscenter/?p=16716" target="_blank">Gardner-Webb University</a> is starting a bachelor of science in criminal justice administration.</li>
<li><a href="http://news.mit.edu/2016/mitx-micromasters-program-development-economics-masters-degree-1205" target="_blank">Massachusetts Institute of Technology</a> is starting a master&rsquo;s degree in data, economics and development policy.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.oswego.edu/news/index.php/site/news_story/healthcare_informatics" target="_blank">State University of New York at Oswego</a> is starting a master of science in biomedical and health informatics.</li>
<li><a href="http://news.olemiss.edu/um-engineering-school-creates-biomedical-degree-program/" target="_blank">University of Mississippi</a> is starting a bachelor of science program in biomedical engineering.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.unr.edu/nevada-today/news/2016/new-approved-programs-at-university" target="_blank">University of Nevada at Reno</a> is starting a bachelor&rsquo;s program in dance.</li>
</ul>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Editorial Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/379" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">New academic programs</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-is-this-breaking-news- field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this breaking news?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-diversity-newsletter field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this diversity newsletter?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div>Fri, 09 Dec 2016 08:00:00 +0000Scott Jaschik179186 at https://www.insidehighered.comExperts talk about the college completion push and what comes nexthttps://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/12/08/experts-talk-about-college-completion-push-and-what-comes-next
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>The national college completion agenda has reached an inflection point.</p>
<p>Republican control of the White House, U.S. Congress and most state capitols likely means less focus on the production of higher education credentials, at least those earned at traditional, four-year colleges.</p>
<p>Job training almost certainly will get more attention than college completion in coming years. But those two goals can be compatible. And the completion push already has begun to include looking at what happens to students after they graduate.</p>
<p><em>Inside Higher Ed</em> spoke with 20 experts who work on college completion from a wide range of perspectives (they are listed below). Some common themes emerged.</p>
<p>The movement and its message have evolved during the seven or so years since the Obama administration joined with the Lumina Foundation and the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation to go all in on a broad effort to increase the proportion of Americans who hold a meaningful postsecondary credential.</p>
<p>The White House at times appeared to focus on the bachelor&rsquo;s degree in its completion push, particularly early on. But certificates and associate degrees got more attention from Washington in recent years. And this administration did more to elevate community colleges than any previous one, even proposing a national free community college plan based on Tennessee&rsquo;s completion and work force development-grounded free community college scholarship.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&quot;The job of the community college is going to be more important in the new administration&nbsp;&hellip; The administration is going to challenge us to be better connected to the economy and work force needs. But that&rsquo;s something we&rsquo;re doing already.&quot;<br />
<em>-- Eloy Ortiz Oakley, president of Long Beach Community College and incoming chancellor of California&#39;s community college system</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Likewise, in 2014 Lumina <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/04/11/lumina-report-college-completion-goal" target="_blank">added</a> &ldquo;high-quality&rdquo; certificates to its annual tabulation of progress toward the foundation&rsquo;s national goal for 60&nbsp;percent of Americans to hold a college credential by 2025.</p>
<p>That goal, which mirrors one set by the White House, is likely out of reach. In 2014, 45.3&nbsp;percent of working-age adults held a degree or a job-earning certificate, according to the <a href="http://strongernation.luminafoundation.org/report/2016/" target="_blank">most recent data</a> from Lumina.</p>
<p>In 2008, Lumina&rsquo;s metric showed 37.9&nbsp;percent of Americans holding at least an associate degree, meaning degree attainment is up 2.5&nbsp;percent during the last six years (4.9&nbsp;percent of Americans held a high-quality certificate in 2014).</p>
<p>College completion rates have begun to climb after a two-year slide. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center this month said the <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/12/05/college-completion-rates-recover-after-slide" target="_blank">six-year completion rate grew</a> to 54.8&nbsp;percent, an increase of roughly two percentage points over the previous year.</p>
<p>While those tepid improvements aren&rsquo;t all that exciting, the numbers are moving in the right direction as <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/05/24/enrollments-slide-particularly-older-students" target="_blank">college enrollments have slid</a>, largely due to the collapse of for-profit higher education and the gradual economic recovery since the recession. College enrollments typically go down when the job market improves.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&quot;The question nobody seems to be able to answer is what is the &#39;right&#39; graduation rate, and I would argue that the answer is &#39;it depends.&#39; There is no single right or wrong rate, since college completion is influenced by a multitude of factors in addition to quality. At what point do we compromise quality or access in the name of higher completion rates? At what point do we drive the cost so high in order to solve one problem that we end up creating another problem?&quot;<br />
--<em> Diane Auer Jones, senior fellow at the Urban Institute and former Education Department official during the George W. Bush administration</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The completion agenda also has taken root across much of the academy, adding completion to student access as primary goals for higher education.</p>
<p>Many say helping ensure that more students get to graduation was not in the past viewed as central to the jobs of faculty members or even college administrators. That view has changed to a substantial extent (at times provoking worries about a cheapening of college credentials to <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/11/07/adjunct-says-he-was-fired-insisting-rigor-his-course" target="_blank">meet completion demands</a>). Hence the demise of the old trope &ldquo;look to your left, look to your right, because one of you won&#39;t be here by the end of the year.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Meanwhile, there&rsquo;s a growing feeling among higher education experts and policy makers of both major political parties that a singular goal of having more Americans earn college credentials isn&rsquo;t enough.</p>
<p>For one thing, achievement gaps between wealthier white students and their lower-income, more diverse peers have persisted. Academic quality remains a variable, raising the question of what, exactly, students are completing. And increasingly, higher education is under pressure to demonstrate the value of college credentials in the job market.</p>
<p>The Obama administration <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/25/education-department-says-rating-system-will-be-consumer-tool-rather-comparison" target="_blank">tried unsuccessfully</a> to link federal financial aid availability to how colleges stack up on student outcomes, including completion rates and graduates&rsquo; earnings data. And the White House was able to push through regulations that would sanction for-profits and vocational, nondegree programs at community colleges that fail to meet thresholds for graduates&rsquo; ability to repay their loans.</p>
<p>The so-called gainful employment rule probably won&rsquo;t be the last attempt by the feds to hold colleges accountable for their affordability and for the job-market value of the credentials they issue. Meanwhile, performance-based funding formulas -- some of which include data on graduates&rsquo; wages -- are on the books in <a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/performance-funding.aspx" target="_blank">more than 30 states</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&quot;There are fairly clear biases [among Republicans] about moving beyond completion, moving beyond higher education&rsquo;s comfort zone.&quot;<br />
--<em>Tony Carnevale, director of Georgetown University&#39;s Center on Education and the Workforce</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet support for the college completion agenda could wane if, as many suspect, an administration led by Donald J. Trump were to say that too many people are attending college. Experts say big spending on infrastructure, which the president-elect&rsquo;s team has discussed, could be heavily focused on jobs for people with high school diplomas, not college credentials -- a substantial portion of Trump voters.</p>
<p>Equally challenging is the general public&rsquo;s loss of confidence in the value of higher education. While data show that college degrees are increasingly the ticket to the middle class, just 42&nbsp;percent of Americans say college is necessary for success in the work force, a 13&nbsp;percent drop since 2009, <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/09/14/survey-decline-public-view-college-essential" target="_blank">according to polling</a> by Public Agenda.</p>
<p>Whether or not the college completion momentum continues could depend on how &ldquo;college&rdquo; is defined. One-year certificates earned at a community college or for-profit institution count as &ldquo;college,&rdquo; too.</p>
<p>Leaders at the Gates and Lumina Foundations say they are undeterred about the completion agenda.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re doubling down,&rdquo; said Dan Greenstein, director of education and postsecondary success at Gates. He cited &ldquo;unassailable facts&rdquo; that &ldquo;educational attainment tracks directly with earnings.&rdquo;</p>
<div class="factbox">
<p><strong>Experts interviewed for this article included:</strong> <a href="http://www.aacc.nche.edu/About/Pages/staff.aspx#baime" target="_blank">David Baime</a>, <a href="https://cew.georgetown.edu/about-the-center/staff/anthony-p-carnevale/" target="_blank">Anthony Carnevale</a>, <a href="http://hcmstrategists.com/us/team/kristin-conklin/" target="_blank">Kristin Conklin</a>, <a href="http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/General-Information/Leadership/United-States-Program/Daniel-Greenstein" target="_blank">Dan Greenstein</a>, <a href="http://www.career.org/steve-gunderson-bio.html" target="_blank">Steve Gunderson</a>, <a href="https://www.sinclair.edu/about/president/" target="_blank">Steven L. Johnson</a>, <a href="http://www.urban.org/author/diane-jones" target="_blank">Diane Auer Jones</a>, <a href="http://www.publicagenda.org/pages/kadlec" target="_blank">Alison Kadlec</a>, <a href="https://www.newamerica.org/our-people/mary-alice-mccarthy/" target="_blank">Mary Alice McCarthy</a>, <a href="https://www.luminafoundation.org/ceo-corner" target="_blank">Jamie Merisotis</a>, <a href="http://www.lbcc.edu/geninfo_board_oakley.cfm" target="_blank">Eloy Ortiz Oakley</a>, <a href="http://kaplan.com/about-us-overview/leadership/" target="_blank">Andrew S. Rosen</a>, <a href="https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/bio/jason-tyszko" target="_blank">Jason Tyszko</a>, <a href="https://www.hobsons.com/resources/author/ellen-wagner" target="_blank">Ellen Wagner</a> and <a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/our-people/josh-wyner/" target="_blank">Josh Wyner</a>.</p>
</div>
<p><strong>Messaging on College Completion Is Shifting</strong></p>
<p>College affordability, student debt and the likelihood of getting a well-paying job after graduation have dominated conversations about higher education in recent years.</p>
<p>Those measures of student success and accountability, particularly with an emphasis on a credential&rsquo;s value in the labor market, will need to be at the core of the completion agenda for it to remain relevant.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&quot;One of the most important ways to have good relationships with employers is to have direct personal relationships between faculty members and employers. The businesses don&rsquo;t have any other way to communicate to the world about what they need besides platitudes and gross generalizations.&quot;<br />
<em>-- Steven L. Johnson, president of Sinclair Community College</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>In addition, the push for more students to complete college is a comfortable reform focus for the higher education industry, said Tony Carnevale, director of Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.</p>
<p>&ldquo;This is the kind of problem you want to have,&rdquo; he said of the higher education industry, arguing that completion also misses the larger concern about value. He calls the push &quot;industrial hygiene,&rdquo; an attempt to clean up a self-serving issue.</p>
<p>The next iteration of the completion agenda, according to Steve Gunderson, president and CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities, the for-profit sector&rsquo;s primary trade group, includes a longer list of imperatives: retention, completion, employment, repayment and student satisfaction.</p>
<p>And the word &ldquo;college&rdquo; more often than not should be replaced by &ldquo;postsecondary skills,&rdquo; he said.</p>
<p>At the same, time, some observers say higher education has yet to adequately resolve even first-order questions about how its access and student success missions should fit together. As budgets tighten, particularly at public universities and small private colleges, there often are trade-offs between the two and tough decisions to make. Legitimate concerns about the completion push often are conflated with just hewing to the status quo.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the nation&rsquo;s widening political divisions haven&rsquo;t helped advance the crucial discussion about the purpose of college.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&quot;Strident partisanship on the left and right is a tremendous obstacle. We have lost our appetite in this country to understand across boundaries.&quot;<br />
<em>--Alison Kadlec, senior vice president and director of higher education and work force programs at Public Agenda</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>State and Local Governments Will Continue the Completion Push, as Will Colleges Themselves</strong></p>
<p>College completion is a big part of the growing interest in performance-based funding at the state level, particularly in red states like Tennessee, which has perhaps the nation&rsquo;s most robust completion policies.</p>
<p>Lawmakers in many of these states view college completion as a work force issue. Employers need more skilled workers, and for now, skills are represented by credentials. There also is bipartisan agreement that college outcomes need to improve, including along equity lines. That&rsquo;s unlikely to change, given worries about the skills gap, job creation and income inequality.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Postsecondary learning is more important than ever before,&rdquo; said Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of the Lumina Foundation.</p>
<p>Lumina has shifted its approach to more directly address the work force side of completion. For example, the foundation&rsquo;s <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/10/17/lumina-revises-plan-completion-push" target="_blank">new strategic plan</a> focuses on how to reach adults who hold some college credits but no credential, as well as people who have no higher education experience. To meet its completion goal, Lumina will need to increase attainment in the former group by 6.1&nbsp;million and 5.1&nbsp;million in the latter.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&quot;Higher education continues to be a path into the middle class.&nbsp;&hellip; I don&rsquo;t know how we do that without education.&quot;<br />
<em>-- Dan Greenstein, director of education and postsecondary success for the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Likewise, Tennessee <a href="http://driveto55.org/initiatives/tennessee-reconnect/" target="_blank">has expanded</a> its free community college program to include slots for returning adult students.</p>
<p>And while free college for all (with annual family income of up to $125,000) is on hold for now, with the defeat of the presidential candidate who championed it, Hillary Clinton, college promise programs like Tennessee&rsquo;s are spreading to other states and many local communities.</p>
<p>As the college completion agenda matures, several experts said it will move toward a focus on jobs and on the nitty-gritty of implementing the next phases of reforms that began years ago.</p>
<p>For example, as colleges sought to improve graduation rates during the last eight years, they were actually looking at student progression and retention, said Ellen Wagner, vice president of research for Hobsons, a company that works on student success, including the use of data analytics.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&quot;The completion agenda is deeply ingrained in the operating systems of our institutions.&quot;<br />
<em>-- David Baime, senior vice president for government relations and policy analysis for the American Association of Community Colleges</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>That work has a financial benefit for colleges, because each student retained means one more who doesn&rsquo;t need to be recruited, which can be expensive. Quitting that effort would be counterproductive.</p>
<p>One way to view the completion agenda, Wagner said, is an effort to &ldquo;reduce friction&rdquo; and barriers as students move through a P-20 education system. That&rsquo;s a big job, she said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re never going to be done with this.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Don&rsquo;t expect the federal government to drop its interest in completion, either.</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s a safe bet that congressional Republicans, who may well be the driving force in federal higher education policy for the next four years if a Trump administration focuses on other topics, will seek a smaller role for the feds. But Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, who will lead the two congressional education committees, are both supportive of the value of higher education and of college completion. (Foxx, though, <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/11/17/virginia-foxx-weighs-gops-higher-education-priorities" target="_blank">recently told</a> <em>Inside Higher Ed</em> that she didn&rsquo;t know what the Obama administration&rsquo;s completion agenda was.)</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&quot;Congress really does hold the cards in terms of how the issues get framed.&quot;<br />
<em>-- Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of the Lumina Foundation</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Common Ground on Alternatives to the Traditional College Pathway</strong></p>
<p>The incoming Trump administration has floated the idea of an infrastructure improvement program with a $1&nbsp;trillion price tag. According to Carnevale, 70&nbsp;percent of the jobs created by such spending would require only a high school diploma.</p>
<p>Even so, some of that money would almost certainly be used for job training at colleges, particularly two-year institutions. If the funding actually happens -- a big if at this point -- it&#39;s impact on higher education&nbsp;would dwarf the Obama administration&rsquo;s $2&nbsp;billion work force program that was aimed at community colleges.</p>
<p>A focus on high school training would also have a higher education component. That&rsquo;s because of growing interest in dual and concurrent enrollment programs, which Republicans in particular tend to favor.</p>
<p>More than 10&nbsp;percent of high school students are taking college courses, according to the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships. About one-third of dual enrollments are in career and technical education courses, the alliance said, with particular growth in rural schools and those where a majority of students are ethnic or racial minorities.</p>
<p>Likewise, apprenticeships are growing in popularity, with bipartisan support. And supporters say apprenticeships should expand beyond technical jobs.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&quot;The election has opened up space to talk about high-quality alternatives to the four-year degree.&quot;<br />
<em>-- Mary Alice McCarthy, director of the Center on Education and Skills with the education policy program at New America</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>A career and vocational focus earlier in the education pipeline is a form of &ldquo;tracking,&rdquo; which is more common in Europe. Tracking tends to freak out Americans, particularly when it is seen to diminish educational opportunity and if it is imposed on students, giving up on them too early.</p>
<p>Yet tracking, when done well, shares some common philosophies and goals with the <a href="http://www.aacc.nche.edu/Resources/aaccprograms/pathways/Pages/default.aspx" target="_blank">degree &ldquo;pathways&rdquo; approach</a> Gates is leading. The foundation is spending $5.2&nbsp;million to help 30 community colleges in 17 states &ldquo;design and implement structured academic and career pathways at scale, for all of their students.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Free community college programs in some ways also bring together high schools and two-year colleges. Tennessee&rsquo;s government, for example, <a href="https://www.tn.gov/education/section/instruction" target="_blank">says it is</a> the &ldquo;first state in the nation to have a fully funded K-14 public education.&rdquo; Talking about K-14 is major shift, and one that mirrors what the Obama administration was trying to accomplish with its free community college proposal.</p>
<p>Other postsecondary alternatives that sit <a href="https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/-a-trump-administration-has-an-opportunity-to-address-gaps-in-our-postsecondary-education-system-and-expand-the-array-of-options-available-to-their-supporters--and-to-all-americans-/" target="_blank">somewhere between high school and traditional college</a> are expanding and enjoy bipartisan support. Those approaches include competency-based education programs, skills boot camps and employer certifications.</p>
<p>Some community colleges have begun offering competency-based credentials, through the federal government&#39;s $2&nbsp;billion work force grant and in partnerships with Western Governors University. Several two-year-college leaders said competency-based programs would expand in the sector.</p>
<p>Some of these emerging players offer &ldquo;bite-size, high-value&rdquo; credentials, said Carnevale. &ldquo;The labor market and costs are melting the system.&rdquo;</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&quot;We need to expand the pathways.&nbsp;&hellip; We&rsquo;re going to have a bigger tent, with different providers.&quot;<br />
<em>-- Jason Tyszko, executive director of the Center for Education and Workforce at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another rare spot of agreement between Republicans and Democrats is that the accreditation process should be reformed, albeit in different ways.</p>
<p>The Obama administration and Senate Democrats have pushed accreditors to scrutinize student outcomes, including completion rates and employment outcomes.</p>
<p>Republicans seem less likely than Democrats to prod accreditors to set &ldquo;bright lines&rdquo; for graduation rates. And some conservatives say too much of a push on completion rates can lead to unintended consequences, including a weakening of academic standards. Faculty unions and many professors agree.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&quot;We need educated people to fuel economic growth.&nbsp;&hellip; In a knowledge economy, a college education is the way to bridge the gap.&quot;<br />
<em>-- Josh Wyner, executive director of the Aspen Institute&rsquo;s College Excellence Program</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet members of both parties have sought to create alternative accreditation pathways for noncollege providers, including Senator Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, and Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican.</p>
<p>Lumina also has been active in exploring new forms of credentialing, with an eye toward completion and job training. If those efforts take hold, they could feature different approaches to quality control.</p>
<p><strong>Deregulation, For-Profit Colleges and Open-Access Admissions</strong></p>
<p>It&rsquo;s been a rough five years for the for-profit sector, which has seen aggressive scrutiny, high-profile collapses, sliding enrollments and hemorrhaging revenue.</p>
<p>While experts disagree about the role of federal regulation in the sector&rsquo;s decline, the U.S. Department of Education has been tougher with the industry in recent years, and contributed to the demise of Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institutes, among others.</p>
<p>The decline of for-profits has slowed the country&#39;s overall postsecondary attainment rates. That&rsquo;s not a bad thing, according to the industry&rsquo;s critics, who say for-profit-issued credentials too often lack value in the job market.</p>
<p>Congressional Republicans plan to roll back federal regulations aimed at for-profits, including gainful employment. The Trump administration likely would back that move.</p>
<p>Some community colleges are worried that a major recovery by for-profits would increase competition and cut into their enrollments. &ldquo;There is a palpable sense of fear&rdquo; on community college campuses about for-profits rising again, said Josh Wyner, executive director of the Aspen Institute&rsquo;s College Excellence Program.</p>
<p>Yet for-profits have sustained potentially lasting damage. Many players in the industry also face structural challenges, including a price point that is a tougher sell and a stigma around the term &ldquo;for-profit.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Gunderson said the shift in Washington is an &ldquo;opportunity for us to reintroduce&nbsp;ourselves.&rdquo;</p>
<p>But he said for-profits are unlikely to again seek to enroll large numbers of students who are unprepared for college and face low odds of completing.</p>
<p>&ldquo;This sector is not going back to where it was in 2010 when it focused on open access,&rdquo; said Gunderson. &ldquo;We cannot ever endure the experience we have had over the last eight years.&rdquo;</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-art-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">2016 Election</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Editorial Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/editorial-tags/assessment" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Assessment</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/123" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Graduation rates</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-caption field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Image Caption:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">President Obama during the 2013 State of the Union</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-is-this-breaking-news- field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this breaking news?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-diversity-newsletter field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this diversity newsletter?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div>Thu, 08 Dec 2016 08:00:00 +0000Paul Fain179796 at https://www.insidehighered.comGraduate school group seeks a framework for master's degreeshttps://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/12/08/graduate-school-group-seeks-framework-masters-degrees
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>Lots of the talk about reforming graduate education <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/05/28/mla-report-calls-phd-program-reform-including-cutting-time-degree" target="_blank">centers on the Ph.D.</a>, namely, making it more innovative and compatible with a variety of possible career paths. But the overwhelming majority of graduate degrees conferred are master&rsquo;s, which tend to have the opposite problem, if it can be called a problem at all: they&rsquo;ve become so diverse it&rsquo;s hard to know what exactly the degree means these days.</p>
<p>&ldquo;The Emerging Master&rsquo;s Degree&rdquo; is a topic of conversation (and a panel) today at the annual meeting of the Council of Graduate Schools in Washington. A deans&rsquo; working group has proposed a framework for defining the master&rsquo;s degree as shaped by demand, defined by competencies, distinguished by metrics and determined by the intersection of those elements. The idea isn&rsquo;t to stall innovation: the council just&nbsp;wants to help its member institutions continue to evolve their program offerings within a more&nbsp;defined concept of what constitutes the contemporary master&rsquo;s degree.</p>
<p>The group of 18 graduate school deans from a variety of institution types last year agreed to study the master&rsquo;s degree, in all its forms, to develop a guide for their peers, explained Bob Augustine, dean of the Graduate School at Eastern Illinois University and senior vice president at CGS. &ldquo;Demand for the master&#39;s continues to be strong, and we wanted to make sure that deans have the tools they need to guide master&rsquo;s degree development.&nbsp;&hellip; There hasn&rsquo;t been a strong, comprehensive study of master&rsquo;s programs for a long time.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Yet growth of jobs requiring a master&#39;s is only expected to grow through 2022, according to information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.</p>
<p><img alt="" class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__291156 img__view_mode__default attr__format__default attr__field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]__ attr__field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]__ attr__field_image_tags[und]__ attr__field_folder[und]__1026" src="https://www.insidehighered.com/sites/default/server_files/media/Screen%20Shot%202016-12-07%20at%204.56.55%20PM.png" style="width: 620px; height: 275px;" typeof="foaf:Image" /></p>
<p><em>Source: CGS</em></p>
<p>Paul Gemperline, a dean of the Graduate School at East Carolina University who is also involved in the CGS initiative, said, &ldquo;Thirty years ago, the master&rsquo;s degree was kind of monolithic as an institution, with a few exceptions.&rdquo; Yet over the last several decades, he said, &ldquo;market&nbsp;demands on the degree have led it to evolve on many divergent paths. It&rsquo;s evolved from, say, a thesis requirement to programs with capstone projects, comprehensive exams and&nbsp;internships to&nbsp;stackable graduate credentials.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Such adaptations tend to arise from the niche needs of employment markets relevant to each degree, he said, and the competencies faculty members instill in students must evolve, as well. Those include disciplinary and interdisciplinary competencies, foundational and&nbsp;transferable skills (think&nbsp;communication or leadership), and professional competencies -- such as the ability to work with patients in a health care program.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Research competencies are crucial, as well,&nbsp;as they signal that the student has moved beyond the undergraduate-level expectation of consuming knowledge to the graduate-level expectation of producing it, Gemperline said.&nbsp;That&#39;s not just for traditional research-based fields, either. So someone in a&nbsp;health care field might consider how to use research methodologies to improve the standard of patient care.</p>
<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s an evolution that we&rsquo;re seeing, and these are guiding principles,&rdquo; he&nbsp;added.</p>
<p>Dennis Grady, dean of the College of Graduate and Professional Studies at Radford University, who&rsquo;s worked with CGS on the emerging master&rsquo;s degree, agreed with Gemperline that it used to be &ldquo;pretty clear how things worked -- it was 30-36 hours of classes and at the end of those classes you got your credential and walked away.&rdquo; But now institutions such as Western Governors University and Southern New Hampshire University have moved away from classroom seat time as a way of measuring one&#39;s progress, he said. Indeed, one of Western Governors&rsquo; sayings&nbsp;is &ldquo;Show us what you know, not how long you&rsquo;ve been there.&rdquo;</p>
<p>While change is good, Grady said, it hasn&rsquo;t always happened in a &ldquo;deliberate and thoughtful way.&rdquo; Acknowledging that 36 hours is an &ldquo;unsatisfying way&rdquo; to define the master&rsquo;s degree, he added, &ldquo;We&rsquo;re starting to get a handle on the basic elements or aspects of the master&rsquo;s degree to be able to&nbsp;differentiate it from the certificates and other types of credentials out on the marketplace now.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Augustine said the framework the group has developed so far is one of &ldquo;alignment,&rdquo; since deans need to align key features in order to develop strong degree programs. Alignment ideally will drive&nbsp;responsiveness, harness innovation and motivate distinctiveness.&nbsp;Here&#39;s a working model of the framework:</p>
<p><img alt="" class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__291166 img__view_mode__default attr__format__default attr__field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]__ attr__field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]__ attr__field_image_tags[und]__ attr__field_folder[und]__1026" src="https://www.insidehighered.com/sites/default/server_files/media/Screen%20Shot%202016-12-07%20at%205.03.49%20PM.png" style="width: 680px; height: 537px;" typeof="foaf:Image" /></p>
<p>Demands come&nbsp;from the learner, the work force and economy, and disciplinary evolution. Metrics include those pertaining to the faculty in a program, students, the curriculum, research, the profession and resources. Degree requirements concern courses, applied experiences and capstones.</p>
<p>Looking to the future, questions for the initiative include how new technologies and methodologies will affect what different competencies will be required of master&#39;s degrees; how innovation can be stimulated among the faculty in developing master&rsquo;s degrees to meet new&nbsp;competencies; and how degrees&nbsp;incorporate or do not incorporate competency-based education as part of their curricula.</p>
<p>Possible next steps for the council include creating a database of competencies for master&#39;s degrees. The Lumina Foundation has done some work in this area, through its <a href="https://www.luminafoundation.org/files/resources/dqp.pdf" target="_blank">Degree Qualifications Profile</a>, a learning-centered framework for what college graduates should know and be able to do to earn an associate, bachelor&rsquo;s or master&rsquo;s degree.</p>
<p>The profile organizes learning outcomes of degrees into five broad, interrelated categories: specialized knowledge, broad and integrative knowledge, intellectual skills, applied and collaborative learning, and civic and global learning. Regarding specialized knowledge, for example, someone who earns a master&#39;s degree can:</p>
<ul>
<li>Elucidate the major theories, research methods and approaches to inquiry and schools of practice in the field of study, articulate their sources and illustrate both their applications and their relationships to allied fields of study.</li>
<li>Assess the contributions of major figures and organizations in the field of study, describe its major methodologies and practices, and illustrate them through projects, papers, exhibits or performances.</li>
<li>Articulate significant challenges involved in practicing the field of study, elucidate its leading edges and explore the current limits of theory, knowledge and practice through a project that lies outside conventional boundaries.</li>
</ul>
<p>Part of the profile&#39;s appeal, according to Lumina, is that it &ldquo;recognizes and accommodates an increasing variety of higher education providers and modes of delivery,&rdquo; offering &ldquo;a perspective on proficiencies that transcends providers and learning contexts. The [profile] is as applicable to learning assessed outside the framework of courses as it is to traditional, course-based degree programs.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Some faculty members view designing degree programs around competencies or market demands&nbsp;articulated by someone outside their campus&nbsp;with&nbsp;skepticism, since professors possess &nbsp;disciplinary expertise. But even beyond those disciplines that face external competency expectations from accreditors, such as engineering or nursing, there is some sense that degrees should better reflect students&rsquo; needs.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.mla.org/content/download/25406/1164106/2011adhocrpt.pdf" target="_blank">2011 report</a> from the Modern Language Association on the master&rsquo;s degree, for example, found a &ldquo;gap between students&rsquo; aspirations and employment outcomes on the one hand and [master&rsquo;s] programs&rsquo; stated goals and curricular requirements on the other. What, for example, should be the role of literary history and study of specific authors, pedagogy, foreign language and linguistics requirements, training in reading instruction, capstones and theses? Many [master&rsquo;s] programs in English may not have thoroughly, or recently, considered how graduates use their degrees and what current or future master&rsquo;s students may need.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Regarding possible skepticism of a framework centered on demand, competencies and metrics, Augustine said it was an opportunity to encourage more innovation, not yoke it. &ldquo;This is a flexible framework and institutions can decide what fits.&rdquo; He said the group&#39;s work thus far&nbsp;has revealed that master&#39;s programs are sometimes constrained&nbsp;by a focus on minimum requirements, not maximum potential. So a framework and additional design tools should&nbsp;help foster more innovation, not less.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-art-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Teaching and Learning</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Editorial Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/287" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Graduate education</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-source field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Image Source:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">U of Washington </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-is-this-breaking-news- field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this breaking news?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-diversity-newsletter field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this diversity newsletter?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div>Thu, 08 Dec 2016 08:00:00 +0000Colleen Flaherty179746 at https://www.insidehighered.comMiddlebury meets aggressive carbon neutrality goalhttps://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/12/08/middlebury-meets-aggressive-carbon-neutrality-goal
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>Middlebury College says it has become carbon neutral, meeting an aggressive goal set last decade and becoming one of just a handful of institutions to reach the sought-after sustainability status.</p>
<p>Its path, however, was not easy or without dispute.</p>
<p>The private liberal arts college in Vermont is today officially announcing it met its target to become carbon neutral by 2016. President Laurie Patton was expected to tell alumni about the milestone at a New York City holiday party Wednesday night. Trustees in 2007 adopted the goal, which does not call for the elimination of all carbon emissions. Instead, carbon neutrality means the campus balances the amount of carbon emissions it releases by offsetting or sequestering equivalent amounts.</p>
<p>Although only a few campuses have reported reaching carbon-neutral status -- among them the College of the Atlantic, Green Mountain College and Colby College -- Middlebury is perhaps the largest in the country to do so. At about 2,500 undergraduate students, Middlebury is not a huge institution, but it still had to sink significant time and resources into changing the way it uses energy. The carbon-neutral status covers Middlebury&#39;s main campus, nearby Bread Loaf Mountain Campus and a nearby ski area, but not its California campus.</p>
<p>The college pumped $1.5&nbsp;million into efficiency upgrades. In 2009 it built a $12&nbsp;million heating facility burning gas from wood biomass that cut millions of gallons of fuel oil being burned. It also invested in solar-energy projects.</p>
<p>In addition, officials hoped to be able to count on a project to turn cow manure into fuel, but it has yet to materialize. So to cross the carbon-neutral finish line, the college is using carbon credits from preserving thousands of acres Middlebury owns at the Bread Loaf Mountain campus.</p>
<p>That move could provoke some debate on campus, as students have questioned the use of credits in the past. It wouldn&rsquo;t be the only debate over carbon neutrality. A pipeline project tied into a biomethane gas project has sparked fierce debate, and students <a href="http://sites.middlebury.edu/sustainabletv/" target="_blank">have scrutinized</a> everything from the existing biomass plant to student engagement in carbon neutrality.</p>
<p>Leaders say the preserved forest captures carbon and that they&rsquo;re protecting it from future development. They add that it allows them to avoid purchasing carbon credits from elsewhere.</p>
<p>The resolution trustees passed called for reaching carbon neutrality by changing the way Middlebury operates, said Jack Byrne, its director of sustainability integration. Offsets were intended as a last resort.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We did our best to avoid having to buy other people&rsquo;s offsets,&rdquo; Byrne said. &ldquo;And I think we&rsquo;re really pleased that we were able to create our own internal offsets, in effect, through conservation of this land. We can look at this as something we generated by our own actions, by conserving these lands.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Middlebury announced a deal <a href="http://www.middlebury.edu/newsroom/archive/2014/node/488112" target="_blank">in 2014</a> backed by a preservation fund to conserve 2,100 acres of Bread Loaf land in perpetuity. At the time, the preservation wasn&rsquo;t linked to carbon credits.</p>
<p>An argument can be made that Middlebury didn&rsquo;t actually change its practices by taking credit for preserving undeveloped Bread Loaf land. It&rsquo;s an argument that&rsquo;s already been talked about on campus, said David Allen, an assistant professor of biology who co-chairs Middlebury&rsquo;s Environmental Council, a student, staff and faculty body.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I think the students will pick up on it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Some of them did mention it, even in the environmental council.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Students may feel that Middlebury did not exhaust every last feasible option for cutting its carbon footprint, Allen said. The council has debated whether credits generated at Middlebury are better than ones that would be purchased on a carbon credit market.</p>
<p>Still, there are indications that many students may not see the move as gaming the system. Michael Shrader, a junior studying economics and environmental studies who is the director of environmental affairs for Middlebury&rsquo;s Student Government Association, cautioned against seeing carbon neutrality as a clear-cut end goal. Middlebury appears to be meeting its goal using standard practices, he said.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Obviously it would be much better if perhaps an institution was able to meet a goal like that without offsets or whatever questionable calculations,&rdquo; Shrader said. &ldquo;But that&rsquo;s sort of unprecedented for an institution like Middlebury. We&rsquo;re going to keep working. Carbon neutrality is not an end.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Using land that the institution owns is different than simply gaming carbon credits, argued Nan Jenks-Jay, dean of environmental affairs. It shows a difference in the way the institution thinks about its land and a greater future commitment to environmental stewardship, she said.</p>
<p>Middlebury has restricted its future financial options by pledging to conserve the land. Real estate has value and can provide a boost in tight financial times.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Colleges and universities tend to think about land as an asset,&rdquo; Jenks-Jay said. &ldquo;They tend not to protect it, because it has value and trustees have fiduciary responsibility.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Middlebury&rsquo;s experience going carbon neutral also represents a study in timing. When the institution said it would pursue the goal in 2007, many other institutions were making similar pledges. Hundreds of campuses <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/06/13/climate" target="_blank">adopted</a> the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment in June of that year, pledging to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By the next year, many institutions had already fallen behind in work under that commitment, <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/09/22/climate" target="_blank">missing a deadline for baseline reports on emissions</a>.</p>
<p>Many other institutions laid out later timelines for carbon neutrality, setting goals in 2020 or 2050, Jenks-Jay said. Middlebury, with its nine-year timeline, was forced to move more quickly. It was also forced to put in consistent effort.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I think the Middlebury experience shows something about the ability to sustain the commitment,&rdquo; Jenks-Jay said. &ldquo;The piece that might be important is the ability to sustain the enthusiasm.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Every college pursuing carbon neutrality has followed a different path, said Janna Cohen-Rosenthal, climate programs director for Second Nature, a Boston-based nonprofit organization of which the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment is a part. The commitment is now called the Climate Leadership Commitment.</p>
<p>The different paths included varying timelines and strategies for tackling carbon emissions. Few institutions set aggressive short-term targets like Middlebury did, Cohen-Rosenthal said. Some set ambitious targets to cut or offset emissions by a certain percentage over the short term but did not commit as strongly to a long-term path for reaching full neutrality.</p>
<p>Middlebury&rsquo;s size makes it an interesting study in institutionwide change. It faced both challenges and advantages.</p>
<p>&ldquo;From my perspective, it&rsquo;s maybe easier for a small school to get some behavioral changes passed,&rdquo; Cohen-Rosenthal said. &ldquo;But to address how they buy and use energy can be challenging. They&rsquo;re not as in control about it, and they don&rsquo;t have as much of a say in the market.&rdquo;</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s also worth noting that Middlebury&rsquo;s efforts to cut its carbon footprint predate the presidents&rsquo; climate commitments and even its own current president&rsquo;s tenure. The college traced interest in carbon neutrality back to 2001 when it drew up an environmental report recommending a carbon neutrality goal. The next year, Middlebury&rsquo;s environmental council plotted a carbon reduction initiative that resulted in a recommended reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of 8&nbsp;percent below 1990 levels by 2012.</p>
<p>Students sought to go further, pushing for a carbon-neutral goal. The president at the time, Ron Liebowitz, listened to them and brought the idea before trustees.</p>
<p>Jon Isham, a professor of economics and environmental studies, taught courses in the early 2000s that helped lay the groundwork for the proposal that&rsquo;s credited with convincing the board to commit to carbon neutrality by 2016. Isham emphasized that the plan was led by students, while also giving Liebowitz credit for pushing the initiative.</p>
<p>Ultimately, though, students had to show that the idea was feasible and could make financial sense, posting a good internal rate of return.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I think the truth is, when you crunched the numbers and compared the projected costs associated with fuel oil and wood chips, the IRR looked awfully good,&rdquo; Isham said. &ldquo;The board wasn&rsquo;t going to end up spending without thinking they were making smart financial decisions.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Isham acknowledged that reaching carbon-neutral status does not make Middlebury perfect. Still, it created a better carbon footprint by burning wood instead of fuel oil, he said. Middlebury argues burning locally sourced wood chips can contribute to carbon-neutral status because forests supplying the wood grow faster than wood is harvested -- absorbing more carbon than is emitted by burning.</p>
<p>The institution has also acknowledged the financial case behind the move. The energy-efficiency upgrades it made save 4.52&nbsp;million kilowatt-hours per year, which would cost about $636,000 annually. The biomass plant that burns wood chips has been saving about $1&nbsp;million or $2&nbsp;million per year and has been operating long enough that it is approaching the break-even point, said Byrne, director of sustainability implementation.</p>
<p>The solar projects Middlebury invested in are also producing revenue, Byrne said. And the Bread Loaf forest preservation will produce enough carbon credits that it will be cash positive.</p>
<p>The campus has more to do even after the carbon-neutrality goal has been reached, according to Byrne. He plans to discuss future goals with faculty, staff and students.</p>
<p>&ldquo;There are plenty of other challenges,&rdquo; Byrne said. &ldquo;We hope to have more of a ripple effect beyond the campus.&rdquo;</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-art-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Administration and Finance</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Editorial Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/217" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Environmental issues</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-caption field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Image Caption:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Solar projects helped Middlebury reach a goal of carbon neutrality.</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-is-this-breaking-news- field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this breaking news?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-diversity-newsletter field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this diversity newsletter?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div>Thu, 08 Dec 2016 08:00:00 +0000Rick Seltzer179781 at https://www.insidehighered.comEducation Department approves Apollo deal but with conditionshttps://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/12/08/education-department-approves-apollo-deal-conditions
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>After months of review, the U.S. Department of Education on Wednesday approved the proposed $1.14&nbsp;billion <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/02/08/breaking-apollo-sold-investors-obama-ties" target="_blank">sale</a> of Apollo Education Group, which owns the University of Phoenix, to a group of <a href="http://investors.apollo.edu/phoenix.zhtml?c=79624&amp;p=irol-newsArticle&amp;ID=2166151" target="_blank">three</a> private equity firms.</p>
<p>But the <a href="/sites/default/server_files/files/Apollo- change of ownership- pre-acquisition_Redacted.pdf" target="_blank">approval</a> of the deal comes with a number of strict conditions.</p>
<p>The department&rsquo;s <a href="/sites/default/server_files/files/Apollo- change of ownership- pre-acquisition_Redacted(1).pdf" target="_blank">letter</a> to the company means the country&rsquo;s largest for-profit university is one step closer to going private if the new owners agree to the department&rsquo;s conditions. Apollo&#39;s shareholders <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/05/09/apollo-education-shareholders-ok-sale-investors" target="_blank">voted</a> for the sale in May.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Apollo Education Group can confirm that we have received the letter and are evaluating it,&rdquo; a spokesperson for the company said in an email.</p>
<p>The Education Department is requiring the company to submit a letter of credit valued at 25&nbsp;percent of its institutions&#39; federal funding allocation, or about $386&nbsp;million, as a condition of approving the change in ownership. The letter of credit is designed to protect students and taxpayers and is used as collateral if the company is unable or unwilling to pay the department back. The department is also requiring that Phoenix and Western International University, which is also owned by Apollo, not change any educational programs or add any new programs or locations until June&nbsp;30, 2018, when the agreement ends. Both institutions will also be required to maintain enrollment levels at or below their current levels.</p>
<p>The department would also monitor the institutions&#39; financial stability, graduation, retention, recruitment and monthly enrollments.</p>
<p>Critics of for-profit institutions viewed the news as a good sign that the department is continuing to push regulatory pressure on the sector even in its final days in office before the new Donald J. Trump administration begins.</p>
<p>In the past few months, congressional Republicans have questioned the deal, especially since Marty Nesbitt, who runs one of the three private equity firms, the Vistria Group, is a close friend of President Obama. Vistria&rsquo;s co-founder and chief operating officer is Tony Miller, who served as deputy secretary of education from 2009 to 2013. The other firms in the consortium are Apollo Global Management, which has no relation to Apollo Education Group, and the Najafi Companies.</p>
<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s entirely reasonable to ensure that an ownership group with no prior experience running a college of any sort should abide by certain restrictions,&rdquo; said Ben Miller, senior director for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very clear the department is taking a real risk that Tony Miller and others who have no experience in running a college will be able to do so successfully.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Department officials could also be making sure that they &ldquo;aren&rsquo;t being taken for a ride&rdquo; by putting these conditions in place, said Rohit Chopra, a former assistant director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in an email, adding that these conditions could also give the private equity buyers an opportunity to walk away from the deal.</p>
<p>&ldquo;If Tony and others are serious about the changes and improvements to Phoenix they want to make, they will abide by what&rsquo;s in this document regardless of what administration is around when it becomes binding,&rdquo; Ben Miller said.</p>
<p>Trace Urdan, who analyzes the for-profit higher ed industry for Credit Suisse, said it wouldn&rsquo;t be surprising if the new owners try to appeal the department&rsquo;s conditions.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I look at these conditions and I see them as onerous,&rdquo; Urdan said. &ldquo;This is another situation where the department will be putting this company in further financial risk by imposing an additional letter of credit on a company they&rsquo;re acknowledging is in decline and only exacerbates that risk.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Phoenix has long been the 800-pound gorilla in for-profit higher education. Its enrollment stood at approximately 460,000 students in 2010, but it has decreased significantly as the for-profit sector&rsquo;s reputation has taken a hit and regulations have increased. Enrollment now stands at about 175,000. This fiscal year the company&rsquo;s net revenue is $2.1&nbsp;billion, and Apollo shares were trading at $9.51 by Wednesday evening.</p>
<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not unheard-of for the department to impose restrictions on growth or new programs for a period of time on new ownership,&rdquo; Urdan said. &ldquo;A letter of credit is not unheard-of, but 20&nbsp;percent is usually the biggest number I&rsquo;ve heard of, and they&rsquo;re usually imposed when a lot of debt is placed on the transaction. That&rsquo;s not the situation here. There&rsquo;s no additional financial risk in place here.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Urdan said other conditions like monthly enrollment reporting and monitoring the number of times the institutions contact students sound more like punishment.</p>
<p>The new buyers could wait to see what a Trump administration, with Betsy DeVos as the prospective new education secretary, has in store for the for-profit sector, but that may be a risk. The new owners also have until Feb.&nbsp;1 to walk away from the deal without facing repercussions.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve also seen a lot of skepticism from others on the Hill about this purchase, so there is a very real risk in waiting as well,&rdquo; Ben Miller said, adding that these restrictions are a way of giving the new owners a chance to demonstrate that they want to run a quality education service and not turn a profit and run. &ldquo;If the goal is to wait this out just to avoid the type of sensible restrictions put in place to protect students and consumers, then that says a lot about the motivations of the purchase.&rdquo;</p>
<p>If the new owners agree to the department&rsquo;s conditions, the next step will be awaiting word from the Higher Learning Commission, Phoenix&rsquo;s accreditor, as that agency reviews the deal.</p>
<p>HLC is evaluating the department&#39;s letter. In a written statement from the agency, a spokesperson said the&nbsp;commission is awaiting additional information from Apollo, including updated enrollment and finance data.&nbsp;A&nbsp;date hasn&#39;t been set for the HLC Board of Trustees to complete its consideration of the sale. (<em>Note: This paragraph has been added to a previous version of the article to reflect new information.</em>)</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-is-this-breaking-news- field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this breaking news?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-diversity-newsletter field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this diversity newsletter?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div>Thu, 08 Dec 2016 08:00:00 +0000Ashley A. Smith179786 at https://www.insidehighered.comReport outlines duties of countries to protect higher education from attackshttps://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/12/08/report-outlines-duties-countries-protect-higher-education-attacks
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>From Afghanistan to Bahrain, Colombia to Zimbabwe, universities, their staff and students have come under attack in the past few years.</p>
<p>In its 2014 report &ldquo;<a href="http://protectingeducation.org/sites/default/files/documents/eua_2014_full_0.pdf" target="_blank">Education Under Attack</a>,&rdquo; the Global Coalition to Protect Education From Attack documented examples of higher education institutions attacked (or turned over to military use) in 28 countries between 2009 and 2012, including 17 where buildings were damaged or destroyed.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/"><img alt="" class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__191361 img__view_mode__default attr__format__default attr__field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]__ attr__field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]__ attr__field_image_tags[und]__ attr__field_folder[und]__1026" src="https://www.insidehighered.com/sites/default/server_files/media/THE%20Logo%20%282016%29.jpg" style="width: 216px; height: 181px; float: right;" typeof="foaf:Image" /></a>As a result, it consulted widely with international higher education networks to understand the causes and consequences of such attacks and develop measures to increase protection. It has now set out its suggestions in a report titled &ldquo;<a href="http://www.protectingeducation.org/sites/default/files/documents/guide_to_implementing_principles.pdf" target="_blank">Guide to Implementing the Principles of State Responsibility to Protect Higher Education From Attack</a>.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The prime responsibility, it asserts, lies with states to &ldquo;abstain from direct or complicit involvement in attacks on higher education,&rdquo; for example by avoiding &ldquo;ideological or partisan uses of higher education facilities, which might foster a perception of the university as a politicized agent.&rdquo;</p>
<p>They must try to protect institutions from attack by &ldquo;safeguarding the civilian character of universities&rdquo; and by limiting &ldquo;the use of higher education facilities for military purposes, so as to avoid converting universities into military objectives and exposing them to attack by other parties to conflict.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Where attacks do occur, the report goes on, states must obviously provide &ldquo;physical assistance to victims,&rdquo; but also the kind of &ldquo;psychosocial programs&rdquo; that can play &ldquo;a key role in encouraging academic staff to continue their research and teaching, and in preventing dropout and low levels of attendance among university students.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Furthermore, through &ldquo;responsible, timely and thorough investigation of attacks,&rdquo; they can &ldquo;send a positive message to the higher education sector and the public about the importance of higher education. Investigations and appropriate prosecution and sentencing of perpetrators after fair and impartial proceedings demonstrate that such acts will not be tolerated, which can help to deter future attacks.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Yet in a world where universities are regularly &ldquo;targeted, burned and shelled by state forces and armed rebel groups&rdquo; or &ldquo;used for military purposes&nbsp;&hellip; as bases, barracks, weapons caches and detention centers,&rdquo; it is also essential for those working within the sector to play their part in promoting the GCPEA&rsquo;s core principles.</p>
<p>Along with lobbying and producing relevant research, it is partly up to higher education stakeholders, the report says, to &ldquo;assist states in reviewing national policies and laws, with due respect for the values essential to quality higher education&nbsp;&hellip; to ensure that higher education communities are physically secure and free from intimidation and improper external influence.&rdquo;</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-art-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Global</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Editorial Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/237" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Foreign countries</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/editorial-tags/times-higher-ed" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Times Higher Ed</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-is-this-breaking-news- field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this breaking news?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-diversity-newsletter field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is this diversity newsletter?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div>Thu, 08 Dec 2016 08:00:00 +0000Matthew Reisz for Times Higher Education179646 at https://www.insidehighered.com